Cultivating Something New

Pivoting away from travel blogging has come with its challenges. I’ve published a handful of posts, lost some followers, gained none, and spent more time than I’d like to admit tweaking my new website that nobody has seen yet. So here’s a quick update on where things are at.

You might have noticed things are starting to look a little bit different around here. Most of you arrived here when the Substack was Rearview Mirror (all of you actually), the name of my travel blog. I actually love that name. It works on two levels: road trips and driving holidays on one hand, and looking back, reflecting on where I’ve been, on the other. But this isn’t a travel newsletter anymore, and the name needed to reflect that.

So it’s now Cultiveur.

When I was at uni doing my Masters, I studied sustainable food systems: how we produce food, how we waste it, how our diets affect the climate, and a lot of the politics around all of it. How corporations control so much of what’s available to us, what’s accessible, our food environment. That’s what I specialised in, and it’s what I keep coming back to.

With the name, I like this idea of cultivation. In food production you have cultivation, and in my case I’m cultivating action, cultivating community, cultivating something that grows. Cultiveur, Cultivating Action. Saying it out loud does make me cringe slightly, but it seemed like a good idea at the time and I’m committed now.

Just to be clear, Rearview Mirror the travel blog isn’t going anywhere. It’s still there, the itineraries are still there, I still update the important pages. But the Substack is Cultiveur now because that’s where I’m headed.

I expected to lose followers with this pivot. I have, and I haven’t gained any new ones yet either. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping it would go differently. But I didn’t know how to start completely fresh, so this was the path that made sense: bring the existing platform, shift the direction, see who comes along. I hope you’ll come along.

To go along with the rebrand, I’ve also built a new website for Cultiveur, and it’s just about ready to launch. Right now it’s a simple site: a home page, a small blog, and it pushes people towards the Substack. I have bigger plans for it, tools and resources to help people make more sustainable choices, particularly around food and lifestyle. But for now, simple is enough.

I built it in Astro, which is a completely new world for me. I have been building websites in WordPress since 2004. My very first site was called Buy Organic (creative name, I know). I’d just moved to France, didn’t have permission to work yet, and needed to figure out how to make money. So I started a blog about organic products: organic beauty, organic food, organic baby clothes. I wrote about the news in that space, stuck some ads and affiliate links on there, and somehow it worked. I never did end up getting a “real job” in France. I just kept building websites: travel sites, food sites, all kinds of sites over the years alongside my main travel blog.

So WordPress was genuinely life-changing for me. But it’s dated now. The security risks, the constant updates, the plugin dependency, the hosting costs. I wanted something more modern, and Astro is that. It’s fast, it’s clean, there are no plugins to worry about, and once you get it set up it’s straightforward to work with.

I will confess that I have spent way too long on the design. Getting very precise with spacing and colours and details that probably no one will notice. I know it’s procrastination dressed up as perfectionism, but the site does look beautiful, so I’m going to allow it.

One thing I haven’t really talked about here is what actually excites me about this space, beyond the fact that I studied it.

A big part of it is co-benefits. The idea that climate action isn’t just some altruistic thing we do for the planet. It has real, tangible benefits that improve your life right now. If you conserve energy, you reduce your bill. If you insulate your home or put in solar panels, yes there’s an upfront cost, but the payback period can be just two or three years, and then you’re saving serious money. If you reduce food waste, you save money. If you go car-free, you save money. If fewer people are driving petrol and diesel cars, we get cleaner air, and air pollution is one of the biggest killers in the world. Millions every year.

Who doesn’t want to save money and breathe cleaner air? That’s what I want to write about. Not guilt, not sacrifice, not buying the right eco-friendly product. The stuff that actually makes a difference and happens to make your life better at the same time.

The thing that’s surprised me most about this whole shift is how much I second-guess myself. For years I wrote about travel and it was second nature. I knew the topics, I knew the audience, I knew what worked. I could sit down and the writing just came out.

This is different. I love this space, I’ve studied it properly, I care about it deeply. But the writing doesn’t flow the same way yet. I’m still finding my voice, still figuring out what a Cultiveur post feels like compared to what a travel post used to. It’s uncomfortable, and I think that’s probably normal, but knowing that doesn’t make it less uncomfortable.

I keep reminding myself that I chose this. I wanted work that meant something more. This is that. It’s just harder than I expected in ways I didn’t anticipate.

Someone once said: write for the audience you want, not the audience you have. I’m trying to hold onto that. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking around through the pivot.